Adobe arrives on Mac App Store with Photoshop Elements 9

On the eve of the launch of Apple's Mac OS X Lion, rival software maker Adobe has released a version of Photoshop Elements 9 for the Mac App Store.

Adobe quietly released its Photoshop Elements 9 Editor on Apple's Mac App Store on Tuesday, as noticed byMacCentral. The offering is Adobe's first foray onto the Mac App Store, which many of Apple's competitors have chosen to avoid.

The $79.99 consumer-focused photo editor lacks the Adobe Elements Organizer that the version on Adobe's website has, but otherwise has the same features. The 1.02GB download requires Mac OS X 10.6.6 and is available only in English.

According to Adobe, Photoshop Elements 9 is meant to "complement iPhoto" by offering more advanced photo editing tools, such as Group Shot, Panorama and Style Match Photomerge.

The software giant recently brought some of its Photoshop tools to iOS with a series of iPad apps. In addition to the Photoshop Express tool, Adobe offers Eazel, Color Lava and Nav apps for integrating with Adobe CS5.5.

The company also recently launched a publicity campaign in hopes of capitalizing on user dissatisfaction with Apple's new Final Cut Pro X. Earlier this month, Adobe initiated a "switcher" offer that provides a 50 percent savings to customers who are switching from either Final Cut Pro or Avid Media to Adobe's rival video editing software Premiere Pro.

For its part, Apple opened the Mac App Store for business in January with the release of Mac OS X 10.6.6. The company has moved aggressively to make the digital storefront the primary source for Mac software, as evidenced by Wednesday's Mac App Store-exclusive launch of Mac OS X 10.7 Lion.

I really wouldn't call it a rivalry. Apple has nothing to match the Creative Suite and I don't know that they will ever try to. As for Final Cut and Premier, I don't think anyone will jump ship for Adobe if they do abandon FC.

iPhoto vs. Elements? Most people have no incentive to bother with the later, and if they did need something better than iPhoto they'd move to full fledged Photoshop.

This is great. I think Apple should try to get as many big name vendors on the App Store as they can.

Agreed. Great news. Adobe, get on with it!
A big challenge though, for the big name vendors is to adapt their pricing strategy. I'd love to see Lightroom here for instance, but at a competitive price..

I really wouldn't call it a rivalry. Apple has nothing to match the Creative Suite and I don't know that they will ever try to. As for Final Cut and Premier, I don't think anyone will jump ship for Adobe if they do abandon FC.

iPhoto vs. Elements? Most people have no incentive to bother with the later, and if they did need something better than iPhoto they'd move to full fledged Photoshop.

Dunno. Photoshop is fairly pricey compared to Elements. It's now also far easier to get Elements on to your computer, and one less place to toss your card number.

Has anybody tried it yet? I am in the market, maybe, as I just upgraded my machine and finally graduated away from Creative Suite 3 (only used Illustrator and can do what I need with another app anyways that was much cheaper).

Greedy Adobe. You can get the boxed version for as much as $20 less online.

There are many, many apps on the app store, at a fraction of CS's prices that are getting the attention of professionals. I am skipping CS 5.5 myself, because I'm not paying a full upgrade price for a half upgrade.

I've never been a fan of iPhoto at all due to its inane file managment scheme (Aperture isn't much better) and its extremely basic photo editing capabilities. PSE could address at least one of those needs. (I downloaded the full Photoshop demo off the Adobe website and found it to be too cumbersome for my needs.)

On a side note, if Preview would let me scroll through photos without highlighting them all, I'd probably never use iPhoto again.